Aging and intuitive physics

The present study was aimed at comparing the judgment capacities manifested by young adults, middle-aged adults, and elderly people in an everyday life setting implying the consideration of direct as well as inverse relationships between the cues and the criterion. The chosen situation was borrowed from elementary physics and concerned the relationships between mass, volume and density. In forming their estimations of mass, all elderly people were able to use volume and density information. In addition, most of them were able to combine these pieces of information in a correct, multiplicative way. In forming their estimations of volume, all elderly people were able to use mass and density information but a majority of them used the density information in a direct way. By contrast, most young and middle-aged adults correctly used the density information in an inverse way. The findings strengthen and extend the case made by Chasseigne et al. [Acta Psychologica 97 (1997) 235] as regards the trouble elderly people face in using inverse relationships in a judgment situation. The difficulty elderly people face is not confined to learning settings. It may also be observed in ecological, non-learning environments, where the relationships considered do not entirely depend on the experimenter's choice.     

Psychological momentum: intuitive physics and naive beliefs

The present research examines psychological momentum (PM), a perceived force that lay intuition suggests influences performance. PM theory is proposed to account for how momentum perceptions arise, and four studies demonstrate the influence of lay intuitions about PM on expectations regarding performance outcomes. Study 1 establishes that individuals share intuitions about the types of events that precipitate PM, and Study 2 finds that defeating a rival increases momentum perceptions. Study 3 provides evidence for the lay belief that as more PM accumulates during a prior task, there should be more residual momentum left to carry over to a subsequent task, and Study 4 finds that an individual whose PM is interrupted is expected to have greater difficulty completing a task than is an individual whose steady progress is interrupted. Discussion focuses on linkages between PM and related constructs.     

A psychometric evaluation of behavioral inhibition and approach self-report measures

Despite the putative applicability and unquestioned heuristic value of capturing individual variation in behavioral inhibition (BIS) and approach system (BAS) sensitivities, the field has yet to achieve widespread agreement regarding a self-report instrument of choice. The current study evaluates perhaps the two strongest candidates, the BIS/BAS scales (Carver & White, 1994) and the Sensitivity to Punishment and Sensitivity to Reward Questionnaire (SPSRQ; Torrubia, Avila, Molto, & Caseras, 2001). Using both confirmatory and exploratory factor analytic techniques in two university samples, we determined that neither measure achieved adequate fit to our data set, and both contain multiple items we deemed to be problematic. Models trimmed of the poor items achieved better fit than the full models. However, even after trimming the data, model fit was marginal at best. Caution is urged in the continued use of both measures on conceptual and psychometric grounds.     

Apes are intuitive statisticians

Inductive learning and reasoning, as we use it both in everyday life and in science, is characterized by flexible inferences based on statistical information: inferences from populations to samples and vice versa. Many forms of such statistical reasoning have been found to develop late in human ontogeny, depending on formal education and language, and to be fragile even in adults. New revolutionary research, however, suggests that even preverbal human infants make use of intuitive statistics. Here, we conducted the first investigation of such intuitive statistical reasoning with non-human primates. In a series of 7 experiments, Bonobos, Chimpanzees, Gorillas and Orangutans drew flexible statistical inferences from populations to samples. These inferences, furthermore, were truly based on statistical information regarding the relative frequency distributions in a population, and not on absolute frequencies. Intuitive statistics in its most basic form is thus an evolutionarily more ancient rather than a uniquely human capacity.     

A comparison of six methods to estimate thresholds from psychometric functions

There are many ways in which to estimate thresholds from psychometric functions. However, almost nothing is known about the relationships between these estimates. In the present experiment, Monte Carlo techniques were used to compare psychometric thresholds obtained using six methods. Three psychometric functions were simulated using Naka-Rushton and Weibull functions and a probit/logit function combination. Thresholds were estimated using probit, logit, and normit analyses and least-squares regressions of untransformed orz-score and logit-transformed probabilities versus stimulus strength. Histograms were derived from 100 thresholds using each of the six methods for various sampling strategies of each psychometric function. Thresholds from probit, logit, and normit analyses were remarkably similar. Thresholds fromz-score- and logit-transformed regressions were more variable, and linear regression produced biased threshold estimates under some circumstances. Considering the similarity of thresholds, the speed of computation, and the ease of implementation, logit and normit analyses provide effective alternatives to the current “gold standard”—probit analysis—for the estimation of psychometric thresholds.     

A test for psychometric function shift

A nonparametric, small-sample-size test for the homogeneity of two psychometric functions against the left- and right-shift alternatives has been developed. The test is designed to determine whether it is safe to amalgamate psychometric functions obtained in different experimental sessions. The sum of the lower and upper p-values of the exact (conditional) Fisher test for several 2 × 2 contingency tables (one for each point of the psychometric function) is employed as the test statistic. The probability distribution of the statistic under the null (homogeneity) hypothesis is evaluated to obtain corresponding p-values. Power functions of the test have been computed by randomly generating samples from Weibull psychometric functions. The test is free of any assumptions about the shape of the psychometric function; it requires only that all observations are statistically independent.     

A psychometric analysis of chess expertise

This study introduces the Amsterdam Chess Test (ACT). The ACT measures chess playing proficiency through 5 tasks: a choose-a-move task (comprising two parallel tests), a motivation questionnaire, a predict-a-move task, a verbal knowledge questionnaire, and a recall task. The validity of these tasks was established using external criteria based on the Elo chess rating system. Results from a representative sample of active chess players showed that the ACT is a very reliable test for chess expertise and that ACT has high predictive validity. Several hypotheses about the relationships between chess expertise, chess knowledge, motivation, and memory were tested. Incorporating response latencies in test scores is shown to lead to an increase in criterion validity, particularly for easy items.     

Individual differences in intuitive processing moderate responses to moral transgressions

Despite the widespread recognition that intuitive processing is integral to moral judgment, research has provided minimal support for the role of individual differences in faith in intuition (FI) in moral outcomes. We propose that reliance on intuitive processing is likely to influence moral behavior when people experience internally generated morally-relevant feelings. We conducted two studies to test this proposal, examining whether FI would moderate the effects of moral recall manipulations on morally-relevant outcomes. In Study 1 (N = 120), FI moderated the effects of condition such that after imagining telling a lie in an email, people high in FI gave increased valuations of hand cleansing products. In Study 2 (N = 197), FI moderated the effects of condition such that after recalling a past personally relevant immoral act, FI predicted less cheating on an unsolvable IQ test. Implications for moral psychology and the importance of theoretically informed methods for studying the role of individual differences in intuitive processing are discussed.     

The nature of intuitive justification

In this paper I articulate and defend a view that I call phenomenal dogmatism about intuitive justification. It is dogmatic because it includes the thesis: if it intuitively seems to you that p, then you thereby have some prima facie justification for believing that p. It is phenomenalist because it includes the thesis: intuitions justify us in believing their contents in virtue of their phenomenology—and in particular their presentational phenomenology. I explore the nature of presentational phenomenology as it occurs perception, and I make a case for thinking that it is present in a wide variety of logical, mathematical, and philosophical intuitions.     

A hybrid model of learning to solve physics problems

Abstract

The current state of the debate between proponents of connectionism and defenders of traditional, symbolic modelling is used as the basis of an argument for the potential usefulness of hybrid models, in which principles of both connectionist and symbolic models are combined. The possible merits of hybrid models are illustrated by showing how a hybrid model of aspects of expertise development in physics problem solving might be superior to existing models. In the hybrid model, which is capable of solving simple mechanics problems and of learning from its own solutions, a distributed memory module is linked to a classical production system. In the distributed memory module, associations between problem statements and useful subgoals are stored. These subgoals serve to guide the inference process carried out by the production system, making the system's solutions more efficient as learning proceeds. The results of a simulation experiment indicate that the trained system's solutions closely correspond to those generated by human experts, and that the hybrid model probably offers a better account of the development and nature of expert reasoning than existing symbolic models.